A record of an art quilter's life. The site name comes from Natalie Goldberg's phrase 'falling down the well' to describe the experience of becoming immersed in the trance of writing (or other creative activity.)

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Our work computer system has many, many layers of security requiring codes and passwords just to get it the home screen before you even start entering user names and passcodes for various programmes. One of these is a password which is regenerated by the system every three months or so., It tell you you need to change it and there is a button to click on and it spews out random letters. If you don't like what you get, you can get it to spew alternatives. All are entirely un-memorable.

Unless you have a System. I decided that if I read them as names and came up with an image of the person whose name it sounded like I could remember it. So I have had the Pakistani Diplomat MI5 spy, the Vietnamese woman who sold sticky rice in banana leaves by the side of the road and currently the Sudanese camel trader. He came along only on Wednesday and as I get to know him I am beginning to fear that he may also trade in refugees. Before that there was a one eyed Turkish carpet trader.

And that is where the problem is. I can see these fictional characters in my head real as life. But apart from the new one I have not got a clue what their names are. I types each one's name at least once a workday for three months each. One only last Tuesday. Do I have the faintest idea what they were called. Nuh huh.

Which is more worrying? That I may have pre-Alzheimers or that I came up with this systen instead of writing the password down backwards somewhere in teh back of a diary as I bet most people do?

Sunday, March 27, 2011

I haven't felt like blogging much recently. But I have felt like quilting! This is my Journal quilt for March for the Contemporary Quilt Group Challenge. I have called it.

The Doctor's opens at 9am

I am trying out methods or products or techniques that are new to me in these 10 inch quilts. Today I tried using abaca tissue for the background and a collage method. Worked fine until I pillowcased the quilt and when I turned it right way out again a big chunk of the ﻿tissue had peeled away revealing the wadding and there were two other cracks. Hmmm - the solution?.....

... collage a bit more on over the big gap and seal the cracks with acrylic paint!

It was clearly going to be fragile even then so I painted all the tissue with matt varnish with a view to longetivity. But it has a delightful unintended consequence - on the figures made of tissue which had been stitched I got a darkening of the colours that gave a distressed effect that added a lot of interest.

Monday, March 14, 2011

You may have noticed that every book on dyeing fabric tells you to do it a different way. And they do so in such an authoritaitve way. Some of that can be explained by there being a number of equally acceptable variants. But some contradictions are just that - down and out unreconcilable contraditions. And which fabric is best to use from the array on offer at Whaleys of Bradford, the UK fabric wholesaler of choice? I asked on the Contemporary Quilt Group Yahoo group and got more fabrics named than people who were giving the opinions. Helpful.

So, realising that my bathroom is in such a state I cannot make it worse with splashed dye and realising that I had a small window of opportunity until the builders come on the 21st, I set out to experiment.

I shall be testing different methods in due course but the point of Experiment No 1 was (a) to compare the fabrics and (b) to see if salt made any difference. Ann Johnstons book Color by Accident says no. Committed to Cloth's Tray Dyeing says yes.

I adapted the basic method from Ann Johnston's book - adapated in the sense that she uses urea (which of course Committed to Cloth do not) and I didn't have any. I used a fat quarter of each fabric for each side of the experiment, in each case dying in a 3.8 litre lakeland plastic lunch box and scrumping the FQ's up side by side. I wet the fabrics with a cup and a quarter of warm plain water.
I made a dye concentreate with Procion MX magenta - two and a quarter tablespoons to one and a quarter cups of warm water. From that concentrate I took ten tablespoons and for the first box of fabric I made that up to a total of one and a quarter cups of warm water and poured it over the fabric. For the second box I made the 10 tablespoons of concentreate up with a salt solution to a total of one and a quarter cups again. I made the salt solution with 200g of salt to 1 litre of water.

For both boxes I agitated to let the dye through and let sit for 10 mins. I then poured over a cup and a quarter of soda ash solution. I made that solution by adding 9 tablespoons of soda ash to 1 gallon of warm water. I squished the fabric around again and let sit in a warm place, lids on. I agitated again after an hour, hand rinsed after six and washed in a machine with synthrapol.

The first lesson I learned was that if you put two capfuls of synthrapol in a domestic washer there is so much foam created that it backs up through the powder dispenser drawer and all over the floor. But lets not linger on that point.

Unfortunately this is the best picture I cna get my camera to take and it does not really show the subtle variations. The top row are without salt, the bottom row with.
Verdict: Salt made no discrenable difference at all.

The fabrics are as listed above arrayed from left to right.
verdict::
(a) Plain cotton white was a shabbier pinkier outcome than the middle three. It also feels rough. Not the best. But not the worst. That was most definately Plain Cotton OPtic White. It was a nightmare. Not only is it the most faded of teh colurs it unravlleed everywhere which none of the others did. It came out of teh washer like this:

To be avoided at all costs.
The Delphina Poplin, the Mercerised Cotton and the Cotton Sateen Arian all took the colour pretty much the same. The difference is in the weight and finish of the fabric.

The mercerised cotton is the heaviest - heavier than most quilting cotton but not too thinc to use in a quilt. It feels sturdy. I did a hand stich test on all three, using a perle thread and sewing through one layer of the fabric and one layer of wadding ( since I tend to pilow case my handstitched quilts) and it was absolutley unremarkable to hand stitch through.
The Cotton sateen is gorgeous because of the finish to the fabric which is kind of - well sateeny! Shimmery. However, it was a little stiffer to hand sticth. Not hard at all on individual stitches but for a running stitch of more than two at a time it showed a touch of resistance. The Delphina cotton is the lightest. perhaps akin to the flimsy Kaffe Fasset fabrics you get. I had read on the CQ Yahoo group that because of its close weave it was hard to hand stitch. I did not find it hard even with such a thick perle thread. However, because of its light weight when I did running stitches it did gather up which the other two did not do. The stitches left a more marked dimpling effect which could be agood thing if you were after a distinct valley between your stitches for contrast purposes.

Overall, I think you get what you pay for. the fabrics are different widths so I converted to a square meter price based on the price for 1- 2 metres. It gets cheaper if you order bigger amounts. Listed in descending order my my personal preferences are:

What a surprise! I think the sateen is too expensive for just playing and trying out methods. However even factoring in dye costs it is not that far above commerical fabrics for a special final project. Certainly a lot cheaper than the sateen on sale at Fetsival last year whch was over £30 per meter if I remember correctly. For playing I would go for the next two on my list
I hope this helps anyone else considering having a go.

Sunday, March 06, 2011

How can you tell an art quilter from a traditional quilter? I know there are all kinds of debate about the utility of art or the art of utilty or such yada, yada, yada stuff. Its easier than that. To wit:

When I was only a traditional quilter (because really I think all art quilters resort to strip piecing in times of extreme stress) I had a shopping list that read

1. Fabric

2. Fabric.

3. Fabric

4. Thread.

Today I realised my shopping list read:

1. Half mask respirator

2. Grout tool

3. Acid cartridges

4. Flexible fence wire

Further, had I been a traditional quilter only, when my husband called me down from my bath to let me see just how utterly unsuitable the new lampshades we spent all day choosing really was, I would have been cursing and muttering about the stupidity of lighting designers and what a waste of time the day had been. As it was my immediate thoughts were:

1. Camera

2. Monorinting inspiration

3. Spoonflower.

But really - who wants a light that makes these kind of patterns all over the ceiling and walls of your supposedly restful lounge?!

Saturday, March 05, 2011

I have been playing with some of the monoprinted fabrics from last Sunday. Here are two little quilts I made just to use some of the fabric. My main idea was for the black and white ones but I have not even started on that yet!

Some details of the top one (Although the colours are not that accurate. Comes from forgetting to take the photos until after dark!)